The Scoundrel and I: A Novella (3 page)

“I am fine,” she said firmly, turned, and walked around the corner. He did not follow her. Of course he did not. A man like that, with aristocrat stamped all over his face, would never actually care about the misery of a common shopgirl.

Beneath the marquee of Brittle & Sons, she unlocked the door, stepped inside, and released a long, shuddering breath.

In the back room, she lit a lamp and carried it to the press. Tracing the beloved backward letters and words with her gaze, she set her fingers to the edge of the frame. Then she closed her eyes and let her fingertips run along the lines of type. It was unwise. She would have to clean the type thoroughly now or the oils from her skin would poorly affect the ink. But she had to feel what her grandmother would have felt if she had been successful two nights earlier, to
feel
Lady Justice and Peregrine’s passion in her flesh.

The surface of the composed type was at once pleasurable against her skin and sharp. Just as their public flirtation was. Their romance. So often she and Gram spoke of the day when the anonymous authors would finally reveal their true identities to each other. Someday.

But with each day Gram grew weaker. And yesterday she had spoken of seeing Grandfather again soon.
Seeing
him.

Thickness clogged Elle’s throat.

The door of the shop opened. Snatching her fingers back from the type, she went into the front room. The sailor filled the doorway, his hat beneath his arm and a glass of frothy ale in his grip.

“What are you—”

In firm strides he came toward her, grasped her hand, and pressed the glass into it.

“Drink this.”

He smelled positively delicious, like rich red wine mingled with fresh cedar. His hand encompassing hers was large, strong, and warm.

“Drink,” he repeated in his commanding tone, and released her.

“You brought ale? For me?” She stared into the glass and then up at him. The air went straight out of her lungs. She had never stood so close to a man like this—except once, and she had tried to block that out of her memory.

This man was so . . .
masculine,
from his taut jaw to the slightly curling locks of ebony hair dipping over his brow. His skin was tanned and the tiny lines radiating from the corners of his eyes gave him an air of gravity and perpetual pleasure at once.

“From the King’s Barrel?” she managed to say.

“Got to put some color back in those pretty cheeks.” His eyes were so blue, vividly blue, like the perfect azure she had seen in pictures of the Mediterranean Sea.

She stepped back, thrusting out the ale toward him. “I do not drink spirits.”

“Ale ain’t spirits. And you’ll drink this.”

“Sir, you might well be in the navy, but I am not and I needn’t follow your—”

“
Drink
. Then you’ll tell me what troubles you and I’ll make it right.”

Sheer shock from this declaration sent the glass toward her mouth and the first sip of ale down her throat.

She coughed. “This is
not
ale.”

“Little something extra in there. Calms the nerves. Drink.” Setting his hat upon Jo Junior’s desk, then crossing his arms over his decorated chest, he sat back against the edge of the furniture and watched her venture another sip, then another. She felt assessed, like he might take the measure of an unexpected ship that appeared on the horizon. As she swallowed a fifth and then a sixth sip of ale—and something extra—warmth gathered in her belly and spread softly to her head. His lips shifted upward at one corner.

He had very fine lips.
Very
fine. Beautiful.

She blinked.

This
was the reason she never drank ale.

“Now,” he said, “tell me.” His voice was like the rumble of a very large cat, almost a purr, a lion’s purr.

Ale was the devil’s brew
.

She shoved the glass forward. He shook his head. She moved around him and set it down on Jo Junior’s desk with a decisive clack. The sailor turned to watch her.

“I’m waiting,” he purred.

“I suppose you will not leave until I have told you.”

“You suppose right.”

“
Correctly
. I suppose correctly.”

He grinned. His teeth were beautifully white and straight, his smile positively brilliant. Perhaps it was his tan skin, or the crisp blue of his coat and snowy white of his neckcloth and waistcoat, or his arms crossed nonchalantly across his chest so that she could see the pull of fabric against muscle . . . Despite the ale, her throat went dry.

She backed away a step. “You have ruined me.”

The blue eyes flicked down her body, then up again before his grin broadened.

“Fairly certain I’d recall that,” he said.

Her cheeks flamed. “That was not, of course, what I meant by those words.”

His eyes laughed. “You don’t say?”

“You
are
a scoundrel, sir.”

“Assuredly. Now tell me your trouble and I’ll do my scoundrelly best to solve it.”

“You will do your
scoundrel’s
best.”

“Aye.” He uncrossed his arms and set his hands to either side of him on the edge of the desk. They were strong, big hands, and the sight of them made Elle’s insides even warmer than the ale that was clouding her head.

Pivoting away, she went through the connecting door into the press room. His boot steps followed, even and easy.

Halting before the press, she said, “This. This is my trouble. You—you
and I
—caused it.”

When after a moment he said nothing, she looked up at his face. He was studying the huge machine made of wood and metal like he had studied her, but with a guarded frown.

“Not quite clear on the trouble, miss.”

“That, sir, is the trouble.” She pointed to a slender blank space inside the chase. “And that.” Her fingertip located another empty spot. “And that. And the fifty other missing pieces of type.”

“Pieces of
type
?” He pronounced the word as though it were foreign.

“The metal bits used in printing. This is a printing house. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“I did. Just don’t know much about it,” he said with diffidence that did not suit him. Then his lips curved into the dashing grin again. “Teach me, why don’t you?”

Plucking out a sliver of type, she brandished it. “This is type. Each piece is a letter or symbol or blank space, or a common word.”

“Common word?”

“The. And. At. In.”

“Aha.”

“Together, arranged properly, they comprise the words and sentences of any printed matter. Each folio of a book, for instance, must be composed and printed individually. Then they are all bound together. It is the same with a newspaper or journal.”

He nodded, glancing from her fingertips holding the piece to the chase. “Fancy that.”

She loved everything about printing, the precision of it, the beauty of a carefully composed page, the scent of ink, and the comfort of this room when a work was in progress and pages were draped all about, the ink drying. It had been an eon, however, since she had seen it the way he was clearly seeing it now: as a novelty.

“What’s this book?” He gestured to the forme.

“It is not a book page. It is Lady Justice’s next publication.” She did not bother hiding the pride in her voice. Everybody in London knew Brittle & Sons published the pamphleteer. Lady Justice was so popular, and her identity such a carefully guarded secret, Mr. Brittle and his sons had turned away dozens of bribery offers for information about her. The Brittles did not even know her true identity; everything she wrote came to the shop via anonymous couriers. Even the letters that Peregrine sent to Lady Justice traveled such a circuitous route that nobody had succeeded at tracing it.

“Hm,” the sailor said without any sign of awe.

“Lady Justice,” she repeated. “Britain’s premier pamphleteer.”

His face was blank.

“You have heard of her, haven’t you?” she said.

“Daresay everybody has.” He folded his arms again across his chest.

“But . . .” London was mad about Lady Justice, either with adoration or outrage. Elle had never encountered anybody who did not have a strong opinion about her one way or the other. “You have read her pamphlets, haven’t you?”

“Can’t say that I have,” he said. “This—” He waved his hand over the press. “This is hers?”

“Yes, although that section”—she pointed—“is Peregrine’s latest letter. She included it within her piece, as she often does when aristocrats write to her.”

“Peregrine. That fellow she’s always quarreling with?”

“Yes. Although I would not exactly call it quarreling.”

“What would you call it?”

“You
have
read her pamphlets. You are only pretending to be unimpressed so that you can keep the upper hand here, aren’t you?”

His gaze came to her, clear and direct. “Don’t know about any upper hand, but no, I haven’t read ’em. Heard plenty about ’em, though. Fellow can’t drink a bottle at his club these days without having to listen to some old lord raging about
Madame la
Justice’s radical notions and some young cub defending her till he’s blue in the face.”

Elle smiled at this evidence of her hero’s notoriety.

“Many good men admire her.” That her work helped Lady Justice’s voice reach thousands of Britons with every broadsheet Brittle & Sons printed filled her with satisfaction.

“But you like him,” he said. “Don’t you?”

“Him?”

He motioned again to the press, his brows canting up. “The hawk man.”

“Peregrine?” she said. “No. I—”

“Heard it in your voice when you said his name. His pen name, that is.”

“What?” Warmth was flooding into her cheeks. “No. I—What did you hear?”

“Softness,” he said. “You admire him.”

“I admire
her
. The reforms she propounds are meant for the good of all Britons. He disagrees with her about everything, of course.”

“You like him.”

“I don’t.”

His lips curved into the gentlest smile. “If you say so.” He nodded toward the machine. “Now, what’s upset you about this type?”

For a moment as he studied the forme she stared at him, and understood how he must command men aboard ship: not with intimidation or even with severity, but with a natural, subtle shift from thoroughly focusing on a person’s face and feelings to the business at hand. If she were not so peculiarly sensitized by the ale she would not have noticed it.

“The other night,” she said, “I was carrying this chase—this frame full of type—down the street. When you galloped by, I was so startled that I dropped it, and it broke. Yesterday I collected the pieces of type, but I have not been able to retrieve them all.”

“How many pieces are missing?”

“Fifty-three.” Abruptly her stomach felt like lead again.

“This don’t seem like a particularly long page.”

“This
does not
seem like a particularly
lengthy
page,” she mumbled. “It is not, in fact.”

“Must be more type somewhere.” He looked past the press. “There.” As though he could see through the back of the huge case on the other side of the machine, he went around to the front of it and drew off the cover, revealing a sloped tray of dozens of little open boxes of type.

“Here’s a veritable mess of the stuff,” he said. “Why don’t you fill in the holes and that’ll be that?”

Her chest felt like lead too now. She went to his side and stared down at the tray. Most of the boxes were still nearly full of type.

“I could. But my employers will discover the missing type when they return from holiday in a fortnight.”

“Wondered about that detail,” he murmured. “Don’t seem the sort of girl to steal right out from under somebody’s nose.”

“What is that supposed to mean? That I am cunning?”

His attention shifted from the type to her face. “No. That you’re intelligent.”

“Oh.” She could not hold his gaze. “This publication is quite brief. When we set the pages of large books, though, this tray is often nearly empty. But it is more than that. My crime is twofold. I should never have taken the chase out of the shop to begin with. Not even out of this room. Even if I had not lost any pieces of type, if my employers discover that I borrowed them for a few hours they would have grounds for terminating me.”

“Well, then why not purchase the type that’s gone missing? They needn’t ever know of this little mishap.”

“I wish I could! The type for this particular press cannot be replaced easily.” Even if she could afford such a purchase. The happy haze from the ale had entirely dissipated. “There are few such presses in all of Britain. It is an original Warburg, and only three were sent to England from Germany. It is an extraordinarily valuable machine, Mr. . . .” She looked up, past his broad, blue-clad shoulder decorated with a gold epaulette, to his handsome face, and her tongue went dry. “Lieutenant . . .”

“Captain,” he said in his marvelously deep and easy voice, the full, glorious force of his intensely beautiful gaze not upon her eyes. But on her lips. “Captain Anthony Masinter, miss. At your service.”

One of her feet fell back. Then the other. “You should not be here. You should go.” She dragged her gaze away and went to the door. “You must go. Now. Please.”

“Can’t.” He remained where he stood. “Not without first finding a solution to this.”

“No. There is no solution. None. I shall simply have to suffer the consequences of my crime.”

“Daresay crime’s giving it a bit too much drama. Determined, though, to help you work this out.” He moved toward her, all six-and-more-feet of gorgeous, well-muscled masculinity. A spike of sharp, hot panic jolted up her middle.

She darted into the front room, snatched his hat off the desk, and shoved it into his chest. “You cannot help. You obviously know nothing about printing.”

“No, but—”

“Even if you did, there is nothing to be done anyway.” She thrust wide the shop door. Without, the night had fallen sultry and dark, the usual sounds of the King’s Barrel spilling onto the street. “Please, Captain,” she said through gritted teeth. “Go.”